PTI: As One Door Closes...

I went to an excellent fish restaurant with LM on Thursday night. He is friendly with several of the students - having taught them through thick and thin in England for over a year - and therefore gets to know things.

So we talked about PTI, who he dislikes and I value for his comedy. The infamous meeting wherein he berated our local colleagues for their lack of punctuality and shocking absenteeism is going to bear fruit apparently.

There's a big question over whether he began the meeting by slamming the door. He told Fraggle Rock that the door slammed in the draught. LM's friends told him that they were stunned by the door slamming, but after a silence, somebody said "Did you mean to slam the door?" And PTI stood in front of them with his hands on his hips and said "Yes, I did". So there's a slight inconsistency there.

One of LM's pals, a cynic who I'll call Ben Massaud, later told him: "your friend should find a new job."

The fact that LM "fraternises" with students (our fellow teachers, it must be said, as soon as they get to C1 level, which will be very soon for the likes of Ben Massaud, but sometime never for poor Old Gomez), and indeed with me, has led to criticism from Fraggle Rock, who do not believe in friendships between ranks, or between us and the natives. They no doubt have time to think of these things, as they lie awake at night, listening for the sound of their doors being levered open with pickaxes.

Good Day

In an email, after reading a brief note of my travails, Mrs Teacher commented that we were all, including HD, suffering from ship psychosis. She knows a bit about that, and I think she’s probably right.

Anyhow, I spoke to LM and said that I couldn’t really give Gomez anything. If this was an FE college in the UK, and that is what it aspires to, then he would have to apologise for leaving my classroom, and then I would (or wouldn’t) agree to his return. However, LM had a word with him, and the class started as usual, with no big sit down. It became, actually, a very good morning’s work.

I also spoke to [Rick] who was in our building in his jeans sorting out boxes of hardware with ITB. I wanted to arrange for The Company to pay for my return flight direct – and not over-stress my always fragile cash-flow. No problem.

In the afternoon break, HD handed T3 and me a letter which gave notice of a very decent pay rise. The letter begins, “We have been reviewing the salary package for academic staff roles over a period of some months.” We? Some months? One imagines a committee composed of accountants, teaching managers, perhaps a trade union official, all entrusted with this difficult task back in December. What a road they’ve travelled, meeting every morning to thrash this out, comparing salaries of academic staff throughout the world.

Factions would form, alliances be made. There would be fall outs, both petty and serious. A whole week lost, perhaps, to the vexed question of whether they should have tea or coffee in their mid morning break. Until, at last, in mid March, they were able to report on the suggested, tenatative size of a possible increase. This was poo-pooed by DoS, who substituted the figure he’d decided on months before.

HD of course hung around whilst we read the letter and looked pleased with himself, like a seven year old who’s bought his Ma a birthday present.

Goodfellas

LM dropped by tonight. We’ve had a few references to the gangster genre lately, and he was able to tell me that HD has a hard on for me. He’s got it in for me, that is, if you don’t follow The Sopranos. I was a bit taken aback. Apparently, this is a continuation of his complaint about my attitude, and the fault seems to be that I’m not deferential enough when speaking to management, HD himself in particular. It’s a genuine puzzle. I’m no-one’s arse licker, but I’m polite to everyone I deal with, I like to think. Ah well.

I can handle this, but LM’s looking very cheesed off. I think it’s him that HD’s got the hard on for, actually, and I’m just another stick to beat him with, now that TOHH is off the scene. It could be that HD, a kind of semi-literate, muscular hamster, is the sort of manager who best deals with people by beating them into submission, convincing them of their worthlessness...

To continue with the language of the motif, he’s a cocksucker. This morning, I heard LM ask him if he had any ideas about improving the students’ rotten punctuality. HD mimicked cocking and firing a large gun, sound effects and all. He reminds me of David Brent, only not so funny.

I don’t know how this will end for LM. He’s missing his wife, and she’s afraid of flying, and if he’s taking shit from management, well, why stay? He’s got enough qualifications and experience to get a University job, and do a Doctorate. Which is what he’s talked about doing tonight. He’s been there before, but talk of resignation is like talk of suicide – it should never be entirely ignored, and one day, the talker might just act.

I had thought that in the event of LM jumping ship, I might be in line for his shoes. But not with HD having the needle. Anyway, T4 is expected soon, and she was on the shortlist for that job, so she must be favourite. IF she ever gets here. She’s been in the pipeline for eight months now.

I got the impression that LM would feel better if I jumped with him, but I won’t. This is ok for me, especially when, inshallah, the wife and bairn get out here. HD’s animosity can actually give quite a bit of entertainment value.

What’s the stupid little fuck gonna do? Clip me? Forget about it!

Perspective and Pep Talks

It's been a remarkable day.

To everyone's surprise, the "temporary" classrooms were in good enough order to permit three class to take progress tests in the morning and a class in the afternoon. It all went very well. The Addams Family, (I feel a bit of a heel calling them that now, I'm becoming quite fond of them), did reasonably well in their progress test - I'll write more about that later when I've looked at the test data more closely. And in the afternoon I took Brokeback Mountain for "study skills", which will actually focus on writing and nut-and-bolts like spelling. It all went so well I did actually wonder if I was dreaming.

As we waited for the minibus to fill up, LM gave me, T3 and TOHH new job descriptions. Well, they were new only in as much as our job titles have been changed from "Project Lead Tutor" to "English Teacher", the rest is the same. The good bit came when TOHH initially refused to take hers from LM because "I'm leaving". I've not got the gen on this yet, but apparently - I gather from a couple of truncated conversations with LM - she's (at least) threatened to resign. T4 is on her way from Turkey (she has been in the recruitment pipeline since August, apparently - put the Company together with Turkish and HUDC bureaucracy and see what happens...) So, if TOHH does indeed go the distance, her classes will be covered and I for one will have a song in my heart.

We got back to The Bungalows to get an induction talk from Johnny, the Company's "go between" as HD described him, but he corrected that to say he was the local manager. Whatever. He was very nervous, and gave information about what not to wear, the local archaelogical society... It was all balls, really. PTI, however was incredibly rude to him, cross examining him in effect and demanding to know why we hadn't been given this information at the start, and why The Company was building a local admin office next door to the bungalows... DoS was there, too, and looked nervous - I was sitting next to him and his hands were shaking when he was talking about the piss poor internet connexion here.

There's been a change of regime in the management of the workmen at the site, with the slightly unhinged pain-in-the-arse "Ahmed" sacked.

If PTI was behaving badly to the point of weirdness, it all got stranger thereafter. LM told me that HD had had a word with him about my demeanour - apparently it's not deferential enough to HD. Ha ha. It'll stay that way, too. What can he do? My actual work is way beyond reproach. We're subject to UK labour law and it would take some doing to base a verbal warning on person's manner when addressing management.

Poor KST has had bad personal news: his wife's from China and is living there at the moment. She's been taken ill and is in hospital, and his Chinese isn't up to getting information about what is actually wrong with her. So he's flying to China as soon as he can sort out a visa. I'll miss him, he's a nice bloke, whose only fault was to form an alliance with TOHH - he's such a nice bloke he would hardly notice she had a few tiles off.

KST2 arrived from the airport in the middle of the meeting, God bless her: what she made of that I can't think.

And what she made of the cherry on the weirdness cake is even less fathomable. I'd gone into the city centre to attend church and run a few unimportant errands, and got a 'phone call from LM, who'd had a phone call from HD, who'd had a phone call from Johnny-Go-Between to say that there was trouble brewing in a flare up of the Danish cartoons continuing sore-point, and we were to stay indoors and not leave The Bungalows. I should therefore return immediately. The city centre was its usual chaotic, happy, carefree self, so I said that I wouldn't - and actually ended up staying longer than intended. There was no trouble. On the way home with our usual taxi driver, who is both devout and has an ear to the ground, I asked him if there was any trouble in town, and he was completely flummoxed by the idea.

So, either Johnny-Go-Between got the wrong end of the stick, or he was sincerely passing on duff information, or there actually was an anti-Danish protest which passed me and the taxi driver by... OR, (and this is the bookies' favourite), it was a load of old toot passed on for unknowable but probably Machiavellian reasons.

When I got back I had a chat over a pipe with LM and KST. LM told me that he questioned the gravity of the situation with HD, who'd said that he had to take his word because "I've been in trouble spots, under fire!" He was an NCO in the RAF - I suspect any fire he took came from his own side, given his breath-taking sense of self importance and utter lack of leadership ability.

Perhaps the writing's on the wall for him. I understand that recruitment makes a significant hole in The Company's budget, and if he loses KST and TOHH in the same week it won't look too good - these blokes get high salaries but they get the drop with ruthlessness if they aren't paying their way.

Weird. I wonder if any wheels are coming off? It's fun to sit back and watch it.

Or maybe the whole day really has been a dream?

Hell is Other People

A topsy turvey kind of a day. No teaching. We got to the college to find that TOHH, who, charged with keeping the staff room, had mislaid it. It was an hour before college workmen were able to break in to the place.

Then we had a faculty meeting, addressed initially by DoS, who gave us some of the Big Picture – the best detail was that Big Cheese had presented a portfolio about what was what at the college, and that this had been okayed by the Minister. He’d said something along the way about resources, and at the end asked if there were any questions. TOHH asked if we could have a scanner in the staffroom.

He buggered off and then HD gave us the Medium Picture. This took several hours and I can’t remember very much about it now. There was nothing new, mostly speculation about when we’ll get out of the temporary-temporary classrooms and into the temporary ones – at least a couple of weeks. During a coffee break, KST teacher informed all present of the joke I’d made this morning about my home-made wine turning to vinegar. I wish he’d kept his mouth shut. This led to HD telling a story about some oil worker who’d gone on holiday and his cleaning lady had been alarmed by the sound of his fermenting alcohol (eh? Yes, I know), she’d called the police who’d broken down the door and subsequently arrested yer man and left him for two days in a hole in the ground. I said in light of his anecdote and the impossibility of making wine with all these vinegar flies around, I wouldn’t be bothering in the future.

KST had complained earlier this morning about coming home to find bulbs changed in his bungalow, and we agreed that it wasn’t a good thing to have workmen coming in whilst we weren’t there. Anyway, after the meeting I saw R., the Mr Fix It, and mentioned this to him on KST’s behalf (he wasn’t there at the time), and wished I hadn’t bothered because I got a long bad-tempered diatribe about how he and he alone had changed the lightbulbs and blah di fucking blah.

LM asked me to lead a meeting about the placement test, which needs to be refined, and suggested the three teachers take one or two bits of it each to work on. I told him that TOHH was unlikely to be co-operative. He said he wasn’t setting anyone up, but... He had to go to a meeting and could I deal with it? And so I suggested we work on the placement test, and TOHH of course refused point blank claiming to be “snowed under”. I felt very unhappy and uncomfortable with the whole situation. Trying to do anything with TOHH’s co-operation is just downright impossible.

She wasn’t done yet, announcing as the working day drew to a close that she hadn’t any money, and when would HD be here with our local currency advances. The arrangement is, we put in expenses claims at the end of the week and get the cash at the start of the next week. And we put in requests for advances at the start of the week, and get them at the end, on the Thursday. I asked her if she’d put in a request and she admitted that she hadn’t. So I don’t know how she expected to get money now. LM appeared and she asked for an advance. DoS wasn’t around, the safe was locked. LM did a fair bit of running around and eventually got cash from HD’s own pocket for her, which was accepted without a thank you and with very bad grace.

The tonight I was having a non-alcoholic beer and kebab with LM and he dropped the bombshell that TOHH has alleged that he’s been bullying her. He had a shouting match with HD about this today. Something about an investigation. He’s so pissed off, he’s thinking of resigning.

Now this is all like some bizarre game of chess. It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, for me to work with TOHH. She must be impossible to manage. I feel that we’re in a situation here which cannot continue. TOHH has certainly turned against LM big time, and is prepared to lie to get him into trouble; I can’t accept allegations of bullying, which he says stem from his telling her that her teamwork was unsatisfactory, which led to her walking out - turning-on-her-heel indeed, - from her five-week staff appraisal with LM. I can say that TOHH gives me the heeby geebies.

So during the last twenty four hours I’ve had to face the likelihood that I won’t be here much longer, especially if LM goes. I got caught in the crossfire today with the placement test – he cannot work with TOHH and tried to get me to fill in for him over that. If I’ve got any criticism of LM, it’s for putting me in that difficult situation, one I’m not being paid for – though I understand the circumstances that led to the situation. The atmosphere is poisoned. It’s not a pleasant workplace, on top of the isolation and separation from family.

And it’s that which is making it unbearable. My wife emails me and tells me how unhappy she is, missing me as she does, and worn out having to cope with a two year old on her own, and the two year old is herself missing me too. Of course, I’m pining for the pair of them.

I could cope with the family separation anxiety, and I could cope with the poison antics of TOHH. Coping with both is rather too much at the moment. But I’ll hang on – things have gone from cheerful to dark in a night and a day, and can swing around again. A coping strategy I’m working on with my class is to imagine it’s all a PC strategy game: Can I get them to Expert level? And with the LM v TOHH debacle, I’ll try to keep out of it as much as possible, and pretend I’m watching a soap opera unfold. Or something.

More Fun with Turns-on-Her-Heels

I've made no secret of the fact that, once I get my MA, I expect to be doing a job not unlike LM's. I've told him this and that I'm watching how he handles things with professional detachment. What I haven't told him is, I think he's doing an impossible job. We walked down to the local shops together last night - it's a pleasant walk if you go the right way, along a tree lined and very quiet lane, bordered by some very wild looking cattle pasture on one side.

He said he was asking me as a friend, Did I think his management was ok, and he was asking this because he could not deal with TOHH, and it was being suggested to him by his line manager, HD, that perhaps his "management style" was to blame. He also told me that she'd knocked on his door on Friday (day off for everyone), saying that she couldn't stand this anymore, something had to be done NOW, and then when he tried to reply she, well, turned on her heels.

I was quite relieved to be able to let off steam about her myself. She's taken this job without thinking. This is not an easy situation for someone whose only interest in life appears to be shopping. So, OK, she made a mistake, but then she could give notice - EFL teachers can walk into any city in the non-English speaking world and find a job within hours, if not minutes. There's no excuse whatsoever to feel chained down.

But she seems to rather whine, complain and unsettle the troops. She seems to have fixed on LM as the cause of her woes, claiming to have been lied to at her interview. This is all a bit much, LM is a genuinely decent bloke who's rather good at his job. And I doubt he fibbed at the interview - why would he? I think she probably heard "swimming pool" and didn't hear an future markers. (As if a daily swim will keep her inner misery at bay...)

Things have apparently come into sharper relief for LM and TOHH because of her five-week review where he had to record her attitude as "unsatisfactory". (The Company's form only gave a choice between that and "satisfactory", ffs: what else could he do?)

This afternoon I was sitting in my window with my shisha pipe and The Sopranos on the laptop, and TOHH went by and asked me if I had an Internet connexion. I said that I did, but that it was very slow. She said, "I haven't had a connexion all morning." And then she stood there and just looked at me as if waiting for a reply, for what seemed like a very long time. She didn't look right. She really shouldn't be here.

On the other hand, LM told me, the feedback he gets from her students is very satisfactory. I'm not too suprised by that. She is one of those EFL teachers who almost worship their learners, advocating for them almost as a parent would. I've met quite a lot of teachers like that, mostly middle aged childless women, like TOHH. On the surface, it's an attitude which passes for devotion to the job. Actually, I consider it to be unprofessional: one needs to be good natured and courteous, but you're not going to take them out for a burger and a milkshake at the end of the class.

During our walk, LM speculated on "If", (not "When") this contract's teddy bear event will come. This thought cheered me up no end: the scenario of angry crowds outside the college, and HD escorting TOHH to the airport, fielding phone calls from The Sun and The Daily Mail as he did so... Incidentally, reading between the lines, the teddy-bear teacher looks like a classic student worshipper. And look what happened to her.

They're Creepy and Their Cooky

The Addams Family had an episode today. One of them is a bit like Gomez, only older. He started to question the value of one particular exercise because it had no overt grammar. I asked him if we should have missed it out, but he ducked that and got onto the old theme of the all importance of grammar, “words we can learn at home – we only need you for grammar. All was well until the teabreak, when they decided unilaterally and without tipping me off, I think led by older Gomez, that they should have half and hour, rather than fifteen minutes.

I don’t think it showed, but I was thoroughly pissed off with this. See, frankly, I couldn’t give a tinker’s fart if they took a whole hour – I’m feeling a bit frazzled by then with the back-to-back classes. But the tea breaks are set for 15 minutes and it’d be my balls on the block if management thought I was letting them have longer. So I told them that going over the agreed time was unacceptable, whereupon Festa and Old Gomez got excited and started shouting. I left the room and got LM in to sort them out.

Which he did, by conceding them a 20 minute tea break. Thereafter they were wee baa lambs.

T3 arrives tonight, and will take Brokeback Mountain next week, so that I can devote my energies, for now, to the Addams Family. I need to do a Second Language Acquisition paper for my MA over the next few months, and they should provide some marvellous data. I’m thinking of some observations on fossilisation, testing, or obsession with Grammar Translation Methodology. Objectifying difficult students this way is a real help.

Garden and Telephone

Up relatively early considering it was a day off, and down to a tools shop I’d noticed on the main road, about ten minutes walk from The Bunglalows, to but some gardening tools. I got a rake, a hoe, a trowel and a spade (the pointed sort with no T bar on the shaft, which you never see in the West), all for the equivalent of £7.

At the back of our bungalow – and indeed all the others – is a turfed area, with a few trees. Beyond that there’s a wall, probably 10 yards away, and the width of the bungalow is probably about the same, so I’ve got 100 square yards of potential garden.

This was something I’d thrown into the ring way back at the interview, and could indeed be described as the clincher. Being a keen allotment holder back home, I’ve been intrigued by the prospect of gardening out here since my first trip in 2004. I’d have my own garden I was told. When I mentioned it to LM, he said I’d better clear it with higher management, and so I took the opportunity of bringing it up at the meeting we had in the first week with DoS and HD. “It’s your garden,” said the latter, “do what you want with it.”

And so I got down to it this morning, chopping up the newly-rooted turf with the hoe, and peeling it off with the spade. As I was standing by the wall trying to get the line right, I noticed a man with a paunch and an expensive hair-do, who greeted me and introduced himself as Big Cheese, the landlord. We chatted for ten minutes about the quality of vegetables here, the prospects of the site’s palm trees transplanted from Egypt, and the identities of the gardners. I askewd what the site had been before, and he told me that it was all rocky ground, and that the topsoil (about 1 ½ metres deep, he said,) came from a fertile area 100km south called Spring Valley. He also told me that the gardener had plenty of a nitrogen bearing substance if I needed it. He pronounced himself delighted that I was making a garden, and said he hoped that others would too.

He buggered off, and I got chatting to LM, who’s been eying another bungalow and secured my help with moving his stuff later this afternoon. I got back to lifting the turf for a bit, and then Ahmed appeared, wanting to know what I was doing and suggesting that the architect wouldn’t be too happy. Restraining myself from saying “fuck the architect” I pointed out that the owner of the site was contented, and that settled his hash. I got back to the turf lifting, and then Reza turned up and queried what I was doing and foreseeing problems, blah, blah fucking blah, which I told him to take up with the management and with the landlord if he didn’t like it – I said it with a bit of heat, I regret to say. It’s amazing how a reference to higher authority will stop a busy body in his tracks.

In retrospect, however, I’m simply pleased that the first interruption came from Big Cheese, the one person who could give a definitive blessing or not to the idea. So that’s sorted and, fuck the lot of them.

I didn’t get too much done, what with all the interruptions, and with LM’s bungalow move. I can’t see what he’s doing it for, really, they’re all alike. Nevertheless, I must admit to a wee bit of heard mentality, thinking “if he’s moving, maybe I should..?” But I’ll refrain, especially as I’ve started on the garden. KST is wanting to move too, on to the other side of the site, “because it gets more of the sun”. That’s just daft, the sort of thing my mother would reasonably want back in Blighty. In a few weeks from now, he’ll be glad to get away from the bloody sun.

Whilst doing the removal job, two new teachers – leadership and management, not English – and an IT bloke, arrived from the airport. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. They had that wide-eyed, tired but eager to please, trying to take everything in, kind of look that no doubt all new arrivals will and which I had a just two and a half weeks ago.

Into town later with LM, I wanted to buy a set of PC speakers, and get my Sony Eriksson k800i phone unlocked so that I could use a local sim card. The speakers were easily got for £12. The unlocking meant a trip to Madhar St, 2KM given over entirely to mobile phone shops. It was an eye-opener. Which shop out of hundreds? So of course I chose one almost at random (to narrow the search down I’d gone off the main street, but our taxi driver advised against that, suggesting there were better shops in the main drag. So we went into a place where a young man was counting an enormous wedge of wonga. “Just a minute”, and when he’d finished gave me 60% of his attention, because young men were in and out of the place all the time, asking questions, bringing in second hand phones to sell. He told me that he’d recently got back from Iran, where he’d been learning English He rang a friend, who came and took my phone away “for software”. It came back after 40 minutes, all working hunky dory and costing £10.

Chest X-Ray and a Shisha Pipe

A much better day.

First thing, to a hospital in the city to get chest x-rays for our residence permits. We were met there by, (I'll call him) Reza, our local admin person. (I called him Mr Fix-It the other day, but that's probably a trifle patronising - he seems to know his onions.)

Reza took in the paperwork to the hospital reception, and then we had to wait outside where the x-rays were being conducted in a big old van - the sort that used to go around the UK in the 60s, like on Alfie. The two women (T2 and DoS's wife) went off to a different place for theirs. There was a bit of a melee. There was a group of what looked like Philippinos, who all went together, a handful of black Africans, a troupe of boiler-suited Chinese workers and the rest were Arabs. Somebody in the van would shout out names, and you'd ascend a short metal staircase into the van. We waited less than an hour. It was all over in seconds, no nonsense about taking off jewellery or changing into a humiliating wee tie-up-the-back gown. In, clunk, out.

Whilst we were there a little old local was shouting at one of the Chinese. I wish I'd known what for, what he was saying. There's still active talk of Arabic lessons, and it would be great not to feel dumbstruck.

Then we went shopping in town, and KST and I searched first the Old City, and then a main street for Shisha pipes. Something in my subconscious must have eventually guided us to a shop in a side street, perhaps I'd been there on my earlier trip. Anyway, it was perfect. Two friendly, helpful old guys, gave us all the gen on a good pipe: the clue is in the weight of the metal part - pay a little bit more and it's twice as heavy. We ended up paying the equivalent of about £12 per pipe with all the trimmings. Most excellent.

Then we met up with LM and T2 at a restaurant near the main square. Ages to get the waiters' attention, perhaps because the place was swamped by posh sounding British tourists (there are a lot of them here).

Taxi home, and some constructive lesson planning for next week. (We're to get a day in lieu because we've given up a Saturday for the x-rays and the planning). T2 far less weird. I'm to teach two classes next week, which we're calling "Induction Week", pending the arrival of T3 in a week's time (visa permitting). It sounds good. Getting to know the students (who are all teachers in their own right), getting their feedback on the placement test, and negotiating with them on the course of their learning over the next few weeks.

But tomorrow's a holiday. We were to go and see a major Roman site, but we've put it off until T3 arrives. Anyway, I plan to go to Church - for all the usual reasons, of course, but it will be pleasant to get away from everyone for a couple of hours.

Contagious Negativity

Back to drafting offline. The internet connexion is flakey, at best. Some sites open, others don’t. When blogspot does, I suspect that’s because most of the page is in the cache anyway. Sometimes, the page loads, but not the sign-in dialogue box...

Anyhow. Yesterday should have been a success, but turned out to be very disappointing. It started unpropitiously when it emerged during a conversation in the van on the way to college about air-conditioning, that we are liable for utility bills – gas bottles and electricity. KST went off it, with a tirade against “them” for putting us out in “the middle of nowhere and refusing to pay for our fucking electricity”. It was on the cusp between embarrassing and entertaining.

T2 and I finished the speaking tests. LM had stayed behind last night and finished the marking. I totalled up the all the placement test scores and crunched them in a spreadsheet. LM, who has taught these students in the past, looked at the scores and was pleased. And then it all started to unravel.

T2 said that she didn’t trust the speaking test criteria. I don’t know why she didn’t say this before spending two days working with them. She expressed reservations about the test validity in general, but couldn’t say what the reservations were.

To some extent, though, even if her concerns were justified, they are irrelevant because the ranking of the students is about right based on previous IELTS results and LM’s knowledge of them.

The big question now is, what level do we teach them at? I was for a small Advanced group, and two Upper Int groups, with the understanding that one of those groups will require more work, and will proceed more slowly.

T2 said that she thought these students were Intermediate, that we couldn’t teach them as Upper Int. LM said that they had been Intermediate for more than a year, that they would suffer colossal lack of face and a subsequent blow to confidence if the carried on as such...

The compromise he suggested was to use next week to do in-class assessment. That’s what we agreed to do.

I’ve come the conclusion that T2 is an idiot. Even if she does have genuine reservations about the test validity, then she needs to have reasons. Ditto the students’ levels. Sentences beginning with “I don’t feel that...” won’t wash.

Now, I can see why it could be objected that I’m feeling a personal affront because someone has slagged off my baby, “my” placement test. Actually, I’d be delighted to have anyone pick holes in it, because it’s still at the development stage, but say “I don’t think this is valid, because...” Subjectivity is out of place.

And anyway, this is criticism from someone who claims to have spent years in Spain and Mexico, and yet can’t tell a mosquito from a fruit fly.

The bottom line is, KST and T2 have got a very nasty dose of negativity and it can be contagious.

"I can cope with disappointment: it's the hope I find unbearable."

Placement tests today. Twenty three students, and we split them into three groups. My group complained straightaway, with some justification, about the quality of the sound recording on the listening test. We’ll have to put that right.

We’d arrived early – and couldn’t get into the temporary-temporary teaching block. Standing in the sunshine (the climate’s really lovely at this time of year), LM mentioned something he’d picked up from the DoS’s pep talk yesterday, which I’d missed: it’s envisaged that there’ll be 600 students in due course – but that only one in ten of applicants will meet the English language criteria. So that means, six thousand people doing “my” placement test.

So it’s in the light of this that T2 went from seeming a bit eccentric to acting downright weird later this morning. After the first testing session, (the listening, then grammar, reading and writing), we were in the temporary-temporary staff room and she said that she thought the first writing question – which simply requires the students to copy out some text in their own handwriting – was “patronising”. LM said that he had thought it was too simplistic until I’d explained it to him, and I was genuinely curious as to why she thought it was patronising, and was starting to say I was looking forward to discussing the test when she just walked out of the room.

LM looked at me in perplexity and said, “This is becoming a problem.” Indeed, she’s done this several times: for example, we’re having an on-the-hoof discussion about the best kind of folders to provide the students with, when she just walks away whilst LM is in mid-sentence.

Anyway, I didn’t respond to LM’s observation. It’s a management thing. Time will tell. Maybe she’s just ignorant, being from Manchester.

Back at the ranch, and two identically dressed skinny blokes get us connected to the Wi-Fi router, and thence to the Internet. Hooray! Except that the connexion’s so slow as to be next to useless. Bah! We’re promised that we’ve got 256mb, but that’s temporary, it’ll go up to a gig tomorrow. As someone once said (I wish I could remember who), I can cope with disappointment: it’s the hope I find unbearable.

This morning we went straight into town to buy stationery. We were joined by the DoS, and a local Mr Fix It, and went on with them to get SIM cards for telephones. I’d already got one a few days ago, but management believes that ones you can buy over the counter are dodgy – the ones we got today needed the production of a passport, a form, and of course, a photo.

Back at the college, we had a pow-wow with HD and DoS. The latter is a small unassuming bloke, but carries some indefinable air of authority and meaning business.

He gave us some background. This college is part of a big picture of modernisation here. Millions of immigrant workers have been lately expelled. Quarter of a million civil servants have been made redundant. The idea now is, to retrain the workforce to deal with the rest of the world.

The current educational system is acknowledged to be woefully inadequate, and has no FE system. Our college will address that, giving training in key skills, business, management, and engineering. Crucially, all of this will be done in English. So our department, whilst fundamental, is not the rationale. In other words, it’s and English-medium FE college, which naturally entails English teaching: it’s NOT a school of English.

Despite the cynicism which is the stock in trade of an experienced EFL teacher, I felt rather buoyed up by my role in giving this place a leg-up to the 21^st century.

Then we got down to the nitty-gritty. Our lack of internet connexion at the accommodation is being addressed as a matter of urgency.

The current site manager, I’ll call him Ahmed, is on his way out. He’s worked in England for several years, he says, and indeed has good idiomatic control of the language. But he’s full of shit. He keeps on about the internet connexion, and how he chases the people responsible – whereas we’ve learned it’s nothing to do with him.

The security situation has also been lamentable. Somebody locks the gate in the early evening, and then goes off to one of the apartments to sleep until nearly eight the next morning. No amount of shouting will wake him. Two nights running, T2 and KST have gone out for a stroll and been unable to get back in through the gate – KST climbed in through a gap in the fence.

We’re to get either a van or a car, and the services of a driver. I asked about driving it ourselves, and the legal situation is to be looked in to.

The site’s “guard dog” has its days numbered. It’s actually just a stray who Ahmed’s befriended, and that would be ok if the bastard didn’t bark nonstop all night. LM was assured that he’d go to some friends of Ahmed’s “who have a nice big farm”. Yeah, right. Ahmed should seek some work there too.

Tellies and more furniture are subject to some kind of budget review in the UK. I said nowt, but I can live without the box for now.

LM had wondered whether it was ok for me to start a wee garden at the back of our house. I was assured today that I should go ahead. This has cheered me immensely.

After the meeting there was a bit of frantic activity to make sure we were ready to actually do some English-teaching related stuff tomorrow – placement tests – at last. It’ll be good to get them done, and then get some structure into the day when we start teaching next week.

When we got back a grim, silent, fat, mirror-glasses wearing African was introduced by Ahmed as Sinousi. He’s to do with the Internet. Maybe he looked so grim because Ahmed was getting on his nerves. Anyhow, still no internet tonight. There are guards on the gate though. And no sound of a dog barking.